Rundstrom’s Critical GIS Perspective

The institutions of assimilation that have silenced indigenous peoples throughout history have been those of the state, education, and religion. Clearly, GIS has been promoted by agents of the first two, with a missionary zeal exceeded only by agents of the third. (p.56)


Rundstrom, in his article “GIS, Indigenous Peoples, and Epistemological Diversity” makes a strong statement that the fundamental design and objective of Geographic Information Systems are incompatible with the epistemology of that found in many Indigenous cultures in North America. He argues that GIS is a mere techno-science where “technology has become the embodiment of science and its precepts”(46). In this light, GIS is constructed within a framework conducive to a particular way of knowing, that compromises the diversity within Indigenous people’s way of knowing. As a result, trying to capture knowledge from Indigenous people into a GIS is a form of cultural assimilation. In this way, GIS can destroy rather than augment non-western ways of life.

He summarizes four implications of trying to represent Indigenous knowledge in a GIS:
• The knowledge becomes accessible and tangible resulting in a fixed, de-contextualized state.
• Removes the details of expressing the geographic knowledge through personal contact, denies incorporative or performative expressions
• Every-time the information is used, it becomes more distant from its context.
• Inscribed knowledge allows the recipient & source to be separated in time & space removing personal responsibility of the knowledge.

Rundstrom’s makes the case that Indigenous people and Euro-North Americans have very different ways of perceiving, communicating and translating geographic knowledge. For example, the techno-science culture depends on a sense of time that is linear, where temporal change is often measured against technological evolution. This is problematic as it tries to capture a cyclical way of knowing time that is based on earthly patterns. At the same time, GIS does little to represent for instance the nonhuman world or the relatedness between species that is inherent in many Indigenous knowledge systems. At the root, many Indigenous cultures have had evolving oral traditions in knowledge translation that does not easily translate into a formalized GIS.

In conclusion, Rundstrom draws attention to the fundamental assumption made by technoscientists—that technology is good for all people. The problem is that contemporary western culture is marked by technological evolutions, that leads to the prominence of technoscience and it is the dominant culture. GIS comes from a technoscience and not from or for Indigenous people. Trying to “capture” a cultures way of seeing the world in a way that does not come from that culture potentially reduces and segments it into something that can be seen only by the technoscience eye. A better situation would see a knowledge translation system designed by and from an Indigenous perspective. But for now, no one wants to be left off the map.

(RUNDSTROM, R. A. (1995). GIS, Indigenous Peoples, and Epistemological Diversity. Cartography and Geographic Information Systems, 22 (1), 45-57.)